Clan trading is a bust. Farmers will just set up clans with 100 bots all running 24/7, then sell the other 50 slots (and access to the loot from all those bots) to the highest bidders. Personally, I couldn't give a crap if people want to do that, but Blizzard clearly does (although I wish they'd just come out and say it, rather than couching their stated rationale in hand-wavy shit about player experience)... and it'd also cast a shadow over the whole season leaderboard (another thing I don't care about).

I think friendlist trading could work... gate it by only allowing one out-of-game trade per X hours spent in-game together or something like that, to stomp on 'flood your friendlist with rent-a-bot' scams.

Let's be careful about using the phrase "average player". There's really no such thing, and as a concept it's hazardously misleading... remember that the average Englishman has two testicles, but the average American only has one.

A hell of a lot of D3 players bought the game, noodled around for a bit, had some fun, then left the game never to return. The 1-70 journey with quests and cutscenes and unlocking skills and all that stuff we consider to be a brief, annoying preamble is the main game for millions of people. For the rest of us, there's still very much a situation where your longevity is my dull grind. Sure, you could get 'longevity' from D3 by reducing droprates and XP by a factor ten, making it a year-long project to get even a single character geared... but longevity shouldn't be the aim, it should be a side-effect. D3 attempts to induce that side-effect by giving us a pile of options for keeping gameplay fresh... easy respeccing, minimal cost for switching characters and (in theory) multiple things to do while in the game. Yes, that comes at a cost of (respectively) removing skills as a meaningful progression goal, diminishing our attachment to any particular character, and... well...D3 doesn'thave that many options for game types in practice, so the last one is moot.

Firstly, giving players completely new abilities deep into the progression curve is, IMO, a dick move. In fact, I don't even like the way D3 does it. You're either gating the best builds behind huge amounts of time, or giving players the best builds early on, then a trickle of irrelevant crap from then on. D3 is tolerable, as the between rolling a new character and getting to the build you actually want to try isn't too long, but its still a total cock-block.

On the other hand, if leveling up just increases the power of abilities they already have, you may as well attach that power either to their bases stats or their items, and get rid of the fake complexity and/or underwhelming rewards from having a conga-line of "+2% to fire skills", "-2% mana consumption" crapskills that I hate (screw you, Torchlight2... you let me down badly).

However, the fact is that as well as being focused on power acquisition, aRPGs are necessarily grindy. By giving us all of our abilities within a few hours of gameplay, but having cross-account gear and paragon levels, D3 sacrifices some degree of power-through-progression for a many more options that take the edge off the tedium. Whether that works or not is, obviously, subjective... but at least Blizzard didn't just barf up "Diablo 2 HD".

What's mostly missing is the incentive to switch things up in the form of build-baiting legendaries. Blizzard isn't dropping those in as fast as they should, but that's the direction they're headed.

OP is definitely trolling. It claims to be unable to parse parody, so it may not be aware that it's trolling.

I think its basic argument is that Blizzard doesn't care about botting and despite statements to the contrary, is doing absolutely nothing about it, and this is bad for rent-a-bot operates like his itself, because everyone else will get fed up with the constant botting and leave, putting it out of business. In this thread, it claims to be remedying this situation by telling us that it runs a lot of bots, will never get caught, and therefore hardcore fans like us should keep playing.

I think there's a teeny tiny hole in that logic. Therefore, the OP either has the reasoning capacity of a tub of boiled potato, is trolling hardcore, or has just come here to gloat under a painfully flimsy pretext.

You're right! Blizzard is a lying pack of lying liars who lie! I shall henceforth stalk every forum I find and post breathless hyperbole so that I can make people who liked a thing hate that very same thing! When I tell them about those lying liars, the lies will make people hate the liars! And that is good, because those people should not like lying liars who lie. Constantly. I shall help those people, and together we shall stem the endless tide of infinite lies from lying Blizzard liars! EVERYONE! JOIN US IN THE EXTERMINATION OF DISHONEST LYING LIARS AND THE ENDLESS TSUNAMI OF FALSEHOOD SPOUTING TRUTH-FLOUTERS!!!

Oh God. I think I just became so full of self-righteousness and crap, my legs are wobbly and my pee-pee feels funny in my pants.

There will always be a BiS item (mathematical fact guys) and the sooner we stop fighting, the sooner we will have peace.

Yeah, but if that BiS item is the same for every class and every build, you've got problems, and RROG is particularly problematic, because not only is it a tough slot to upgrade, it also makes other slots hard to upgrade.

IMO the damn thing was brain-damaged to start with, mainly because it applies to all sets that you're currently wearing. Ideally, it'd only apply to one set at a time, but there's really no elegant way for the player to choose which set it should apply to. IMO they should just retcon the affix out of existence... at which point their numbers will show that only 6 people and a single incredibly smart parrot are still doing bounties.

It's not really about what's 'optional' or 'mandatory' (although, much like 'viable', 'forced' and 'mandatory' are words that forum idiots refuse to use correctly), it's about facilitating fun by not coupling various gameplay options together. Adding stat-points to achievements would only affect two groups of people: achievement nerds like myself who would simply be getting a free upgrade, and people whowant the upgrade enough to start doing achievements because it's the most efficient path (e.g high paragon players), but don't actually like doing them. The former group wouldn't really care, as we clearly do achievements simply because they're there, and the latter group would feel railroaded into activities they'd prefer not to do. That's a net negative, IMO.

D3 already has too many tightly coupled systems. Bounties -> Rifts -> GRifts or GTFO. That's bad enough, as it disregards anyone who just wants to do bounties (that aren't Act I Normal), just wants to do Rifts, or (God forbid) actually prefers Story Mode (assuming 99% of Story Mode fans haven't already quit playing by now). True player freedom requires decoupled game options with appropriate reward structures.

If Don Vu alone isn't responsible for the current state of Monks and Wiz, why would he list that as his responsibilities? That would be like telling everyone you're the head coach of the worst team in the league. Last I checked coaches of the worst teams always get fired.

Because it IS part of his job description, even if it is part of the entire dev-team.

Whoa, whoa. Slow down there... you're saying that just because he works on the class dev team, he's not in charge of class design. But... that could mean all sorts of crazy things... that devs aren't designers... that software development is collaborative... that design is an inexact process... my head is swimming...

Look, you know what... we know this guy's name. We have a vague idea of what he does. That's all we need to blame him for everything. It worked for Jay. It worked for Josh. Why change a winning formula? DOWN WITH DON!

I'm not even sure what problem the damn thing is supposed to solve. Sure, it was annoying having to re-roll a socket on every weapon, but now it'll be equally annoying having to re-roll the second best affix.

That would be kinda cool... except that, depressingly, it would almost certainly spawn a whole new family of loot drop conspiracy theories. "My friend got 8 legendaries, I only got 1... don't play Demon Hunters on Tuesdays if you're with a Monk!"

Blizzard is buffing DH survivability, which will free up more skill and/or passive slots, and they've already said they'll be buffing some under-used skills too, specifically with a view to normalizing class competitiveness in ladders. So meh.

OTOH, +1 lolz for the irony of the OP's username, and +1 WTF for saying a defensive resource being used exclusively for offense wasn't broken.

To all the people saying "This doesn't really affect RiF, you just have to pay one key everytime rather than 5 every third time":
That is true for leechers. It is, however, untrue for runners. Runners gain abso-fucking-lutely nothing from dragging your ass to the boss and killing it with you apart from a minor magicfiend boost (which a follower with legacy magicfind gear totally trumphs, by the way). They still have to use their own key to open the next rift either way - which means the incentive for runners to do this are equal to zero. Especially concidering a set of bounties will let you do 6 rifts, instead of 1.2 rifts. Why on earth spend two minutes finding people and herding them to the boss and killing it, rather than just slaughter and repeat on your own?

Clearly, RiF as a way to minimize key usage will no longer exist... but because the cost has also been dropped, RiF as a way to maximize shard acquisition may well still thrive. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

I have a copy of this sheet where I'm calculating EXP Total, but I only know the XP values for PL1 and PL100 without doing the math. I might add another column showing the pre-change equivalent and share it here.

Those numbers don't line up... but as others have already pointed out, they're kinda moot point until we know what the XP-per-kill ratio is at 60 vs. 70.

It's not exponential, it's quadratic (and the original paragon curve wasn't exponential either, it was piecewise quadratic). Different beast entirely.

If that chart is correct, then P100 -> P163, and P100*10 -> P531, so I'm not sure what's up with the P100*10 players getting 376... that maps back to just a shade over 5 P100s... somethings off. Perhaps you need to log into a character once before its XP gets added to your total?

So, to you, trade is "sitting around in lobbies yelling "10 SOJs for Tal's Helm" for hours"? Interesting. Because, you know, to me trading is giving my mate this awesome barb item I found while playing a wiz, or trading weapons with my mate because I have a slow weapon and want a fast one, and he has a fast one and wants a slow one.

There seems to be a fairly straightforward solution to this, which is to only allow trading with people who are on your friend's list, and have been there for some period of time, and why not make it so that unbound items become bound when traded to stop on any arbitrage nonsense.

Blizzard goes on a lot about 'playing with friends' (hell, that's their cookie-cutter response to the always-on thing)... I'd really like to see them have a crack at trying to solve the 'trading problem' in a way that's compatible with their stated philosophy.

All I see is that they dont care that much about D3... All they care is Warcraft and all related content about that, that's why they announced RoS at Gamescom, because they dont have anything else to say about D3 and now they can at least fill that empty space with this"indepht D3 panel".
Anyway, I hope I'm wrong and they do have something to announce.

... they deliberately emptied a space in their schedule to deliberately fill it with not much?? Hm.

It's no suprise (to me) that there wasn't a lot of D3 coverage (although it's still disappointing)... Blizzard's already made a crapton of announcements. Remember also that D3X has a lot more room to move than WoW, so I'd expect a hell of a lot of iteration, especially when it goes into beta. Thanks to datamining, we already know a lot more details about what Blizzard is trying, and where they're going... and we also know that they care very about D3. You should probably put that little idea to bed.

I'm getting really tired of those whiners on the official forum... They keep beating the same dead horse over and over... wow this, d2 that...

I really don't get the butthurt over D3's WoW-like features... they're both action games which revolve around acquiring increasingly powerful weapons and armor. There's a hell of a lot in common when it comes to surface-level features.

Hopefully, GF will simply vanish. I've always been skeptical about the wisdom of coupling MF and GF, as it leads to a feedback loop. With no GF anywhere, it'll level the economic playing field.

MF also shouldn't be on gear... it leads to micro-managing crap that doesn't mesh at all with D3's gameplay. I think attaching it to NV still works well as a mechanic to induce players to keep going, rather that cherry-picking the highest density patches then restarting ASAP. Perhaps as a paragon stat it'll work so long as it takes a fair number of points to match the NV contribution.

I think a 7th skill slot would be awesome - As a coodown only skill. Aka you can only place say Archon, WoTB or say Seven sided strike in the 7th slot because i know 1 Ive never used any type of long CD skill because it just does not feel worth it. 15 sec of glory or 1 powerful attack then i am useless for 2 mins? No thanks.

Ive talked to a ton of players 20+ about this idea and they all love it. 6 normal skills you can set your build to then pick 1 uber cooldown skill based on what you like. for EXP i would totaly pick WoTB for the + Dodge chance as mine for an amaizng def cooldown. No way in hell i'd use it any other time with just 6 skills tho.

That's a very interesting idea.

It would be like a "ultimate" skill slot (similar to what mobas have). But that would require those skills to be removed from the Normal Skill pool then. But I kinda like the core concept of giving these "ultimate" abilities a separate system.

Me too. WoW ran into a similar problem (as do a hell of a lot of class-based action games... hell, it also pops up with super-weapons that have very limited ammo) where too long on the cooldown means players always hold it in reserve, but too short and it has to be nerfed to remain balanced, but loses a lot of appeal in the process.

I'd really like to see an uber-ability slot that charges up with each elite kill, and costs multiple charges to actually use. Build its use into D3's famous combat cadence... ok Blizzard? Please?

Then you have to remove the chances of ever being Vortex, Frozen, Jailed, knocked back into Arcane Sentry nodes. as that will kill you 100% of the time. Vortex should just be plain removed. Everyone agrees, Cant see why it made it to this point. You cant have skillful play when your getting sucked into stuff your trying to stay out of.

As a nobody, I disagree. They should (and almost certainly will) reduce the damage (and probably frequency) of sentries, and perhaps make vortex either mutually exclusive with certain abilities, or make them share a cooldown. There are probably numerous other solutions that everyone hasn't thought out, so perhaps everyone should re-think what the actual problems are, and come up with more interesting solutions than "remove it". In either case, everyone would probably benefit from a discussion about game mechanics rather just insisting on a blunt-force solution. Nobody has been around longer than everybody and has a better appreciation of the usefulness of discussion and dialog rather than generalizations and demands.

Happy to see crit hit chance cap lowered to 40%. Also 250% crit hit damage cap is also good. This will make gearing more interesting as it's not just "trifecta all the way".

I don't think it will... it'll just change gearing to "hit your caps, then stack EHP". I suspect Blizzard's preferred choice is diminishing returns after a point, but avoid that approach because it's mathy, and user-opaque.

It's not healthy to have a 70 to 80% reduced effectiveness of snares and affixes [and others] in inferno. It's not healthy for Elites to be significantly stronger than regular monsters. There's a lot of things that ain't healthy Wyatt, welcome to the monster you have helped create.

Given that full-duration CC trivializes inferno difficulty, I assume you want to see CCs nerfed for all difficulties, making them a clutch tool for getting out of the sticky situations people often find in Nightmare difficulty?

... and you're either proposing that trashmobs take as long to kill as elites, or vice versa, but I can't figure out which option is the good one.

I always thought Blizzard might do this, but I picked the odds as being so low it wasn't worth taking the possibility seriously.

Truth be told, I'm going to miss the GAH. I only really used it to plug gaps in my gear (and, not going to lie, find a pile of -levelreq gear for my alts), but Loot2.0 should take care of that nicely.

Not sure I want to know how this is going to affect the bot situation... constant streams of gold-site spammers dropping in and out of public games doesn't sound that great to me. Hopefully Blizzard has/will have some good tools for spotting that crap quickly.

We shall see.

Also, well done all the gloaters in this thread. Your bravery shall be... well... forgotten within days, I'm sure. But still, kudos.

I'm sad that you didn't mention maybe the most important part of the interview

"Were you tempted to scrap it entirely? I ask. Did the thought ever cross your mind?!

"We'd be lying if we didn't say yes," Josh replies after a moment's contemplation. "We saw the reaction. Again, it's a complicated matter. It's not just complicated at the team level, or even the Blizzard level."

This implies that Activison really likes the RMAH and they don't want to give up on the money

... or that the impact on the community (in terms of account comprimises and a much slower path to power) would be significant and difficult to predict. But what do I know, I'm not wearing a tinfoil hat.

If Lylirra didn't negotiate a clause in her contract that gives her a small bonus everytime she says "Not finalized", or "Subject to change", she's a damn fool. Those words are going to be at end of almost every declarative she utters from here until release.

It's not her fault every word she utters will be transmuted to mean something else and then stamped with a CONFIRMED! from the rumor-loving crowd.

If Lylirra didn't negotiate a clause in her contract that gives her a small bonus everytime she says "Not finalized", or "Subject to change", she's a damn fool. Those words are going to be at end of almost every declarative she utters from here until release.

I'm really in two minds about that. I would have liked more classes, but I actually pretty much only play two at the moment anyway, and if they really do nail the build-enabling legendaries, that'll add enough variation to keep me going for another holycraphowmany more hours.